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Topic: Jason barkhouse murdered (Read 11881 times)

I thought I had seen this before on here..but couldnt find it. This is an article on the 20th anniversary of his well...brutal killing I'll copy and paste it then add the link

Loss still painful two decades later

Lisa BrownLighthouse staff

Beulah Barkhouse buried her son and she buried his car - she knew that was what he would have wanted.

It was a final act of a mother's endless love, one of the last things she could do for her boy.

She also raised his young daughter Melissa, watching tenderly as she grew into a teenager. When tragedy struck again, she buried Melissa next to her father and an older brother the girl never knew because he died in infancy. Now she lovingly tends their graves because that's all she has left to do.

For years, Beulah held onto the hope that Jason's killer would be caught. But after more than two decades, even that hope has begun to fade. Now, she says, she doesn't believe her son's murder will ever be solved.

"Not now," Beulah says. "I really don't anymore."

She thinks she knows who was responsible, but the police were never able to prove anything. Whether having that suspicion makes her son's death easier or more difficult to bear, she isn't certain. Jason's death isn't a mystery to her, but no one was ever held accountable.

"It never goes away. You think about it every day," Beulah says.

"That night that Jason was killed was so moonlight. It was just bright like day," she says. "I've never got over the moonlight. I don't sleep. I'm not afraid, the moonlight just bothers me."

Jason was a fairly quiet child. He didn't do well in school, his mother says, because his heart wasn't in it. He wasn't all that interested and probably didn't pay enough attention.

He left school early and went to work. He married at 19 and the couple lived with Beulah for a time, while Jason built a small house just down the hill from his mother's place.

Jason and his wife had a son who died at the age of seven months. Four years later, they had a little girl, who they almost lost to illness when she was still an infant. Melissa survived but spent much of her first two years at the IWK hospital.

"Jason loved her dearly," Beulah says.

Melissa was not quite three when her mother left. Beulah took over raising the child, who was just four years old when her father was killed.

Jason then got involved in a relationship with Fern Casey, who left her husband - a friend of Jason's - and moved into Jason's home. Three months later, he was murdered.

"The evening before I had gone to my mother's. My mother was a semi-invalid and I had gone to her house just down across from the community centre. I was going to stay the night with her," Beulah recalls.

"The next morning before I was up Albert Bezanson came to the door and said there was something awfully wrong with Jason," she says.

Beulah immediately went to her son's home. Albert's son Blair met her at the door and told her Jason was dead. He warned her not to come inside.

Beulah didn't listen. She stops telling her story for a minute as tears fill her eyes.

"I guess likely I called the police. Some of it's a bit fuzzy," she says, her voice cracking.

She remembers it was a hot day, one of those June scorchers that promise summer is on its way. The police told her it was too hot to take fingerprints.

Investigators came and went from Jason's home for days but there were no arrests. A few weeks later, his mother went back to the house.

"As soon as we were allowed in, I went," Beulah says. Some neighbours had already been in and replaced the flooring in the bedroom where the blood has soaked into the unfinished boards. Beulah helped clean up the rest of the house.

She later rented it for awhile. Now her brother lives there. "They weren't here around that time. They don't have the memories that we have," Beulah explains.

She visits, however, and says she doesn't mind it. She's had to be strong.

But even after 20 years, the pain doesn't go away.

"Not too much," she says, wiping tears from her cheeks. "You never get over it. Then to see his daughter die."

Melissa was killed in a car accident on her first date at the age of 16. That day would have been her father's 40th birthday.

"It's very hard," Beulah says. "I have my daughter. I don't know what I'd do without her.

Her daughter, also named Fern, lives with her. She works in Bridgewater and travels daily. They often talk about Jason as memories surface.

Beulah recalls the last time she saw her son alive. He came to see her at his grandmother's home around 10 p.m. the night before he died. He only stayed for a few minutes, saying he was tired and was going home to bed.

"It was very rare that there ever was a night that he didn't come," she says. Jason could and did talk to her about everything.

Jason was a big man, probably six feet tall or a little taller. He weighed over 200 pounds. Sometimes he sported a beard, although he didn't have one around the time that he was killed.

"He liked driving cars and he liked to drive fast. He was kind of reckless in a way," Beulah says with a fond smile. "I know there was people scared of his driving, but I never was. I always felt he could handle a car.

"He never was much to go to parties or anything like that," she adds. "Mostly he worked and then he watched television."

Although she doesn't think her son had any idea that something was about to happen to him, after his death Beulah remembered conversations they'd had.

"It was so strange," she says. "He had a Dodge car and thought it was just the greatest thing ever was."

The car still ran but needed work. Jason had great hopes of restoring it some day.

"He would say 'if anything ever happens to me Mom, I don't want anybody else to have my car.' He said 'if you want it, that's okay, but if you don't want it, I don't want anybody else to have it. I don't want anybody else to have any parts off it. I want it buried.' It's buried. I buried it quite awhile after," she says quietly.

Jason Barkhouse was asleep when a killer walked through his bedroom door in the early morning hours of June 26, 1980.

Sleeping beside him, his girlfriend of three months, Fern Casey, recalls hearing the basement steps creaking under the weight of footsteps. She tried to wake up Jason, but he was a sound sleeper.

"The next thing I remember was somebody standing in the bedroom door," Fern says. "It was a large person. They filled the doorway."

That's the last thing Fern remembers until the alarm clock woke her a few hours later. Twenty-seven-year-old Jason was driving a pulp truck for her brother and had planned to be up before daylight to get on the road.

"When the alarm went off, I guess I didn't realize that Jason was on the floor and not in bed," Fern recalls. "I kept shaking him and he wouldn't wake up, but I didn't realize there was anything wrong."

She got dressed and walked across the road to the neighbours' house. Albert Bezanson was outside working on his daughter's car so she could go to work.

"I asked him if he'd go over and see what was wrong with Jason. He must have looked at me and realized that there was something wrong. I remember lying on their couch and then I don't remember anything else," Fern says.

Albert recalls looking up to find Fern bleeding and saying she couldn't get Jason to wake up.

"There was a gouge on her head there," he says brushing his brow, "and the back of her head was bleeding. I didn't know what the heck was wrong, but I knew something happened over there that was drastic."

Nervous of what might face him, Albert called his son Blair who lived nearby. Blair went to the small bungalow and discovered his friend's body in a room covered with blood. Jason had been beaten to death and his body mutilated.

It was the beginning of a mystery that has gone on for more than two decades in the small community of East Dalhousie, just across the county line above North River and Parkdale. Despite extensive investigation, the RCMP never learned who killed Jason in his own bedroom. No one has ever been charged in his death.

Albert and his wife Ruby knew Jason well. He was Ruby's nephew and grew up just yards up the hill from their home.

There were rumours that Jason sometimes drank too much, but the Bezansons never saw any evidence of that. Jason would stop in and visit sometimes, particularly with Albert after he lost his own father when he was 19.

But on that moonlit night, Albert and Ruby didn't see or hear anything out of the ordinary. They wish they had so they could have helped solve the case all those years ago.

"It was a summer night. We had the windows up, but we never heard one thing," Ruby says.

Investigators brought in a tracking dog a few days later, but it had rained hard in the interim. The dog followed a scent to the brook below Jason's home, but there the trail ended.

The authorities believe the killer went in through the kitchen door, although there were no signs of forced entry. Fern recalls she and Jason went out for a little while before settling in for the night and thinks they might have left the door open then. At night, the doors were usually locked.

The killer left through the basement, leaving a smear of blood on the door. The brook near the house leads to Black Duck Lake a short distance away.

"I wondered lots of time if they'd have drug that lake if they'd have found anything," Ruby says. She believes investigators might have found clothing or whatever weapon was used to strike Jason.

The police told them some sort of object was used due to the injuries on the body and other evidence at the scene. The killer swung it high enough and with enough force to mark the bedroom ceiling.

Investigators spent days at Jason's small home and around the area. At one point, police said they were very close to knowing what happened, but that never materialized.

For a time, the Bezansons say, people in the rural area were frightened and nervous.

"We used to go to bed and never lock our door," Ruby recalls. "I almost barred the doors after that. We were terrified. We barred and locked everything."

The evening before his murder, Jason visited both the Bezansons and his mother, who was staying down the road with his grandmother. He was tired and told everyone he was going home to bed because he had to work the next morning.

"We have no clues. I'm sure we would have told years ago if we knew," Ruby says.

The only person who might have provided information has little recollection of the night in question. Fern was also badly beaten and suffered serious head injuries.

Her arm had a visible dent where doctors said she must have lifted it to shield herself from blows with a round object. The flesh was scraped away from the left side of her forehead down to the skull. She still has a dent in her skull on top of her head.

Doctors cut her skull to relieve pressure on her brain. She still has a plastic plate in her head and problems with her balance. She had no senses of smell or taste for years after the attack.

She was 30 at the time.

Fern doesn't recall the assailant saying anything to them. She remembers being afraid, but wasn't the type of person to faint in fright. Doctors have told her she can't remember due to her head injuries.

She was hypnotized twice, the first time shortly after her month-long stay in hospital. She was hypnotized again since, probably seven or eight years ago.

"I could only bring back so much and that was it," she says.

She's spent years wondering who was responsible for the attack. Jason had been assaulted a few months earlier, but otherwise seemed to get along well with people in the community.

Police believe Jason knew the killer. The genital mutilation would indicate the attacker felt a disgust with the morals of Jason's sexual past.

"Everybody liked Jason and as far as I know I didn't have any enemies," she says. "It used to just about drive me crazy. Every person that I would meet I would wonder if they were the one."

She has no doubt the killer left her for dead as well as Jason. Doctors told her she would have bled to death in another hour. The alarm clock saved her life.

This is a very substantial reward. Perhaps it will help to jog a memory.

Last Updated: Friday, June 25, 2010 | 11:28 AM AT

Nova Scotia is offering $150,000 to anyone who can help solve the 30-year-old homicide of Jason Robert Barkhouse.

The case is the latest unsolved homicide in Nova Scotia's cash reward program.

Barkhouse, 27, died after he was severely beaten in his home in East Dalhousie, Kings County, early on June 26, 1980.

The attacker who broke into the house also assaulted a woman.

Police determined that Barkhouse had been assaulted several weeks before his death.

The Department of Justice is offering up to $150,000 for information that leads to an arrest and conviction. Anyone who comes forward must give their name and contact information, and could be called to testify in court.

"Some information may now seem insignificant. But that seemingly insignificant piece of information could have a big impact on getting justice for Mr. Barkhouse and his family," Justice Minister Ross Landry said in a release.

There are now 61 cases in the Rewards for Major Unsolved Crimes Program. The homicides and missing-person cases go back to 1955.

What I am wondering is if the person who assaulted Jason in the weeks before his murder was known to police, or charged with assault, or was the perpetrator unknown?? I would think the person who comitted the assault weeks before would be the prime POI in the murder case. I am also under the assumption that the severity of the crime and the genital mutilation shows the murderer would have a personal, rage against the victim.I feel terrible for the mother, to lose her entire family, such sadness! She must be a very strong person! I also wonder if the 1st wife (mother of Jasons children,) was a POI, and if she was familliar with the new girlfriends ex-husband. I would be interested in knowing the whereabouts of both these people during the time of the murder.

I agree justice. We def need some more detail about this, many unanswered. The genital mutilation def makes you think the person would have known him, very personal. Also there were a number of people it could have been, how deep did they investigate?

I am from the area and have heard this story so many times growing up. It's such a sad story, especially with Melissa's tragic accident at such a young age. We all have theories as to what happened ... I believe that someone was upset that Fern and Jason were in a relationship. Maybe they did this or hired someone else to do it. This person(s) took the brook intentionally so there would be no scent. Maybe someone of interest in this case could get to their own house, or a house of someone they knew, via this brook. And with the rainfall that night, it was an added bonus because their exit from this brook would more than likely be undetectable as well. My heart has always gone out to Jason's mother/Melissa's grandmother. A person should not experience a loss so large in their lifetime, let alone two. It's tragic enough for a child to go before a parent, let alone a grandchild before a grandparent. This poor woman has had both.

The way the news story/interview reads, we are left to assume that the husband of Jason's girlfriend was a key suspect, and yet we are told nothing about that person or if he had an alibi that cleared him etc. Does anyone living in the area know more what ever became of some of the key players/suspects in this tragedy? What a horrific attack for Fern to recover from and for the victim's family. There is no mention of whether Jason's young daughter was home at the time of the attack though one would hope not. Very tragic that she died on her first date on what would have been her father's 40th birthday.

what a truly cruel twist of fate...his daughter dying on what would have been his (jason's) 40th bday.....

no one seems to be willling to talk about anything,(but expect others to sing like canaries)for whatever reason in just about any situation.

(the everyone is a suspect thing gets old fast, while i do understand the logic behind it, i also see the futility in it as well)

I dont have much faith in this case ever being solved or this thread really moving forward.

my hope when posting this was that if someone was searching his name online they may be shocked to see that there are still people who care enough to post it somewhere and keep it in the public eye....perhaps causing someone who knows something to spill the beans or at the very least casue discomfort and lack of sleep, especially on a full moonlit night.

What a tragedy Would there be anyone that would be able to retrieve archived media reports? This might help answer some of the previous post. I would be interested to know about the accident that killed Jason's daughter on what would've been his 40th birthday. Was it a hit and run? would have the POI still lived in the area at this time? Justice for Jason and his family!!!

What a tragedy Would there be anyone that would be able to retrieve archived media reports? This might help answer some of the previous post. I would be interested to know about the accident that killed Jason's daughter on what would've been his 40th birthday. Was it a hit and run? would have the POI still lived in the area at this time? Justice for Jason and his family!!!

The accident was truly an accident as far as I can remember from when it happened. Basically a car taking "Thrill Hill" too fast. Came over the top and lost control. Tragic really. Melissa was a passenger in the car.